Computer Science "Cool" Assignments

The Assignments session at the annual SIGCSE meeting is all about gathering and distributing great assignment ideas and their materials. For each assignment, the pages linked below describe the assignment and provides materials -- handouts, starter code, and so on. Please contact Rashmi Pimprikar (rpimprikar@techboston.org) for zipped version of these materials. CS1 (College Level 1 CS course) and CS2 (College Level 2 CS course). This page is updated often so please visit us for future additions.

Professional Development Information

Assignment Name/Class

Materials/Links

  1. Star Map - CS1
  2. Face Pamphlet - CS1
  3. Secrets in Images - CS1
  4. Random Art - CS1
  5. Enigma Encryption - CS1
  6. DNA Splicing - CS1/CS2
  1. Star Map -- Karen Reid (Draw the night sky and constellations -- simple file reading and drawing)
  2. Face Pamphlet -- Mehran Sahami (Simple facebook application built with just CS1 technology, students love it :)
  3. Secrets In Images -- Brent Heeringa, Thomas Murtagh (Hide secret messages inside images - neat image manipulation with data as simple arrays)
  4. Random Art -- Christopher A Stone (Build nifty images with recursive nested random symbolic math espressions (python))
  5. Enigma Encryption -- Dave Reed (Range of easy to complex cryptography projects, using paper/manipulation model to get started)
  6. DNA Splicing -- Owen Astrachan (Surprisingly easy DNA manipulation, set up for the students to measure/experiment with their code)